JAAMA’S TECHNOLOGY HELPS TO VERIFY EMPLOYEES DRIVING LICENCES

One of the UK’s largest recruitment agencies has introduced Jaama’s electronic driver entitlement checking service (EDECS) to verify the licences of 1,200 employees and up to 20,000 agency at-work drivers.

Pertemps is rolling out the licence checking service following a successful pilot and is one of many Jaama’s customers which utilise the DVLA’s approved EDECS system to help ensure corporate occupational road risk management compliance.

Pertemps Fleet IT support manager Tim Stokes, who oversees the licence checking process, said: “We have always checked the licences of our employees, but it was previously a laborious manual process. The Jaama system is very robust and makes the whole process more efficient whilst providing Pertemps with a very clear audit trail which flags up any issues that need to be tackled.”

Checks to date have resulted in one employee being dismissed after it was uncovered that he had previously had his driving licence revoked by the DVLA.

Meanwhile, checking the driving status of agency supplied drivers has always been a major corporate risk management issue and Mr Stokes said: “It is important that we can demonstrate to our customers that the drivers we supply have a valid driving licence.

“Whether permanent employees or temporary drivers, we want to be certain that we have done everything possible to protect both ourselves and everyone who uses the roads.”

Meanwhile, Tamworth based Cathedral Hygiene started using the Jaama licence checking service after discovering that an employee had hidden a drink-driving conviction by presenting a ‘clean’ licence.

Fleet manager John Smith said: “We had an internal licence checking system in place as part of our at-working driving safety policy, but the incident proved to us that we needed more robust procedures in place.”

Mr Smith said: “We have now been using the Jaama licence checking service for more than a year. The checking process immediately highlighted one driver who had a conviction on his licence that we were not aware of.

“As the Jaama module automatically undertakes checks at intervals determined by ourselves depending on the risk attached to individual drivers, and then flags up issues that we need to know about as an employer, much of the administration associated with licence validation has been removed.

“The comprehensive service delivers peace of mind to the business that it is doing everything possible to manage the safety of drivers in accordance with best practice.”

Jaama sales and operations director Martin Evans said: “Driver licence checking should be a vital component of every company’s occupational road risk management policy. Frequent checks are even more important following the DVLA’s November 2010 decision to change the rules for revoking licences from a ‘concessionary period’ of 12 months to just four weeks.

“Our driver licence checking service means that not only is the administrative burden completely removed from customers, but they will have all information on drivers and their vehicles held in one central database, building a combined intelligent profile and highlighting exceptions.”